Reddit CEO Steve Huffman has taken a firm stand against unlicensed AI scraping by major tech companies like Microsoft, Anthropic, and Perplexity AI.
In a recent interview with The Verge, Huffman expressed frustration over blocking these firms from scraping Reddit’s content without permission, describing the effort as “a real pain in the ass.”
Microsoft, among others, had been using Reddit’s data for AI features in Bing without notifying the platform. Huffman alleges that Microsoft even resold Reddit’s scraped data to other search engines. Despite these challenges, Reddit has successfully blocked Microsoft and emphasized its pay-to-play model for data use.
Reddit has also struck licensing deals with Google and OpenAI to regulate AI firms’ use of its content. However, Microsoft’s Head of Search, Jordi Ribas, rejected the idea of paying Reddit, stating that Bing should “stand on its own feet.”
Huffman believes that without licensing agreements, Reddit cannot control or know how its data is used. He hopes that future AI regulations will address the misuse of publicly available data by big tech firms.
